From: "mailto:victorgm%40webtv.net"
To: "mailto:robert.morningstar%40gmail.com"
Subject: DREAMING: The 4 Dream Suggestions to Use if YOU Want to Remember and INTERPRET Them Correctly!
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2013 21:11:17 -0800

I just finished creating a two-page handout on WHY DREAMS ARE IMPORTANT,
how to remember them, how to interpret them, and how to use them to
transform your life. This handout was created for the near-death
experience class in I teach in Sedona. If you are interested, you
can download a pdf copy here:

• First and foremost, you need to value dreams and WANT to remember
them. Here are a few ways to awaken an interest in dreams: talk with
long-time dreamers, read dream books, visit dream websites and social
networks, attend dream groups, study the profound impact that dreams
have had on human beings throughout the ages. Since dreaming is an
ability that all human beings are born with, you, too, can learn to
remember your dreams -- and then use them to change, heal and transform
your life.

• Since dreams are servants of health and wholeness, they are easier to
remember and understand when we maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Eat organic foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. Avoid
pesticides, artificial ingredients, preservatives, and heavily processed
foods. Breathe fresh air. Drink clean water. Soak up sunshine daily.
Spend time in nature. Exercise. Cultivate healthy relationships,
especially with God and other human beings. Pursue your heart's callings.

• Establish a regular sleeping schedule that allows you to get
sufficient sleep (at least six hours). Take naps; avoid going to bed
overly tired.

• Be sure your sleeping space is clean, dark, quiet and comfortable.
Turn off lights, computers, televisions, and other electronic gadgets.

• Every night, before falling asleep, take time to review the events of
the day. Write these events down in your dream journal and then focus on
the areas of your life that you wish to receive help with. Doing a
"clearing session" before you go to sleep will help clear your mind of
the clutter that will otherwise follow you into your dreams. It will
also help you focus on the areas of your life that are most important to
you.

• Place a small flashlight or book light near your journal to use when
you write your dreams down (turning big lights on will tend to wake you
up and make it difficult to get back to sleep).

• Whenever you awaken, whether in the middle of the night or in the
morning, write down whatever you remember -- no matter how fragmented,
insignificant or ridiculous it may be. This will help train you to
remember your dreams and also help you capture important dreams that
might otherwise slip away. Dreams that seem unusually ridiculous or
evoke strong emotional reactions are often very important. If you try to
drag dreams through the night, instead of writing them down as soon as
you remember them, you can forget and/or distort key elements, which
will make them harder to understand. Your sleep will also suffer.

• During the day, think about whatever dreams you remember and find ways
to apply their messages in your life. Remembering dreams, but not taking
the time to write them down, or writing them down, but not acting on
their messages, will limit the helpfulness of your dreams.

• Share your dreams with other dreamers. This will anchor, reinforce,
and deepen your dream life. This is also an excellent way to learn more
about dreams and unravel their hidden meanings.

• As you begin to experience the transformational power of dreams, thank
the universe for the guidance, insight, and healing that begins to flow
from your dreams to all aspects of your life. Your dreams will help you
realize that you are not alone. You are, instead, known, loved, and
surrounded by benevolent forces that constantly seek to help.

• Dreams can be symbolic and/or literal. They possess layers and layers
of meaning and come from many different levels of consciousness. A
helpful rule is to first look at the images in your dreams as aspects of
yourself. Then as the people, places, and things that they appear to be.
Then as both. Then look beyond these interpretations for other meanings.

• Dreams are usually talking about current issues and events in our
lives. To help you identify the area of your life that your dreams are
talking about, give your dreams a title and identify their main theme.
Then look for themes in your life that are similar.

• You can also use the feelings in your dreams to identify the areas in
your life that your dreams are talking about. Ask yourself, "What area
of my life feels like this?"

• Spend time thinking about and talking to the people, places, and
things in your dreams. Ask them who they are, why they have come, what
message do they have for you?

• Share your dreams with other dreamers, especially those who know you
well. If possible, find a dream partner that you can share dreams with
every day. Working with dream partners and dream groups can be
magnitudes more productive than working on dreams alone. That's because
others see what we overlook and dreams, by nature, thrive on collaboration.

• No one is better equipped to understand the meaning of YOUR dreams
than YOU. You will know you have unlocked the meaning of a dream when
you have an "ah-ha" moment. That's when all the pieces fall in place and
you "get it." Since the full transformational power of a dream is not
unleashed until you experience an "ah-ha," don't settle for
interpretations that fall short.

• All dreams are important. Big dreams gift us with breakthroughs and
healings, while small dreams help us ground, integrate, and manifest
lofty visions step-by-step, day-by-day.

• As dreamworker Jeremy Taylor says, "all dreams come in the service of
health and wholeness." Some dreams help us connect with the divine
within. Others shine bright lights on the dark, undeveloped, and shadowy
aspects of our nature. By working with all the different parts of
ourselves, dreams help us realize our full potential and accomplish the
unique purposes for which we were born.

• Whether short and simple, or epic productions with a cast of
thousands, dreams love drama. In order to get our attention and reveal
the true nature of things, dreams are masters of shock and awe. When we
embrace their wildness, they reveal transformative truths; when we
resist, they turn into nightmares.

• In some dreams, we are portrayed as lost and incorrigible. In others,
we are full of virtue, wisdom, and power. When confronted with such
extremes, the tendency is to feel good one day, and awful the next,
depending on the content of our dreams. In order to rise above this
cycle, we need to remember three things: 1. Dreams exaggerate; 2. The
challenges we encounter in dreams (and waking life) transform into
blessings when we face them; 3. While there are imperfect aspects of
ourselves that need to be recognized and developed, we are, in essence,
indestructible parts of God who will, in time, master everything.

• While we can and should learn how to tap the power of dreams, we
should never try to force them to do our bidding. The resources they
offer are so far beyond earth-bound minds and emotions, that we limit
ourselves, and our awareness and growth, if we try to exert too much
control.

• While we are all born with other methods of guidance -- intuition and
rational thinking, for example -- there is no substitue for dreams. In
the same way we have five physical senses to find our way through the
world -- seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting -- so, too, do we
have different kinds of inner senses, each with different strengths and
weaknesses. We should aspire to live a balanced life in which all the
senses we have are honored, used, and developed, including dreams.

"For these, if paid attention to, brought back in the memory, written
and kept and studied, interpreted as actual experiences which are
symbolic and yet real in their nature, become guidelines to such an
extent that one should be able to understand and rectify all those
things in the life which are of an imperfect nature."

“Jung told one dreamer: ‘Look here, the best way to deal with a dream is
to think of yourself as a sort of ignorant child, ignorant youth, and to
come to the two-million-year-old man or to the old mother of days and
ask, ‘Now, what do you think of me?”

"Our dreams are a continuum, revealing, if we care to look, that we do
not exist alone, but in a skein of relationship with all that has been,
all that is, and all that shall be.”

"I find the most powerful single tool for getting to the fuller meaning
of dream experiences and dealing with problems and issues that they
present, is the technique that I call dream re-entry; in other words,
learning to go back through the doorway of a remembered dream to explore
the dreamscape in greater depth. Dreams are real experiences, and the
full meaning of the dream is inside the dream itself, if you can only
recover more of the original and full experience of the dream."

“Another aspect of appreciating a dream involves sharing it with others.
When we work on a dream alone, we tend to repress those aspects we don’t
want to see. To encounter a dream in the company of others helps us see
what we would otherwise gloss over.”

"I’m not enthusiastic about the term 'lucid dreaming' because it has
often been associated with silly notions of 'controlling' or
'manipulating' dreams. Through dreaming, we have access to a source that
is infinitely wiser and deeper than the everyday ego, and we want to be
available to that source. I am in favor of learning to choose where we
go and what we do in dreams, as in waking life, but that requires
discernment, not the fantasy of control."

“If you take the idea of evolution of the species at all seriously — if
you think there is anything at all to the idea that species alter both
behavior and physical structure to enhance their ability to survive in
particular ecological/environmental circumstances — then there must also
be something about dreaming itself that is of primary and fundamental
importance from a collective evolutionary survival point of view,
because in spite of the multiple, serious, and dangerous drawbacks
associated with dreaming, there is not a single relatively evolved
species that has found it of increased survival value to abandon this
seemingly… dangerous behavior.”